Alaska halibut fishermen of every sort could face fishing cuts this summer because "retrospective bias" compounded by "structural uncertainty" has led the "WobbleSQ assessment model" to adjust the "CEY" for the Pacific halibut fishery, the staff of the International Pacific Halibut Commission told a packed meeting room at the Anchorage Hilton Hotel on Tuesday.

The comments were almost enough to make reasonable fishermen wonder if a new species had invaded the North Pacific. Say hello to the dreaded "stifling bureaucratese."

Dozens of fishermen from the Lower 48, Canada and Alaska are now wrestling to understand this critter, though what is happening in the ocean is on one level really simple: there is a Pacific Coast-wide shortage of adult halibut, and IPHC staff is recommending a commercial halibut catch for the central Gulf of Alaska of about 12 million pounds, down more than 16 percent from last year's catch, which was down about 25 percent from 2010's catch limit of about 20 million pounds. That's a 40 percent drop in two years.

The central Gulf is a nursery ground for Pacific halibut and ground zero for the 49th state's largest commercial and sport halibut fisheries. As proposed by commission staff, the guideline harvest level for the sport charter fishery would also be slashed about 16 percent this summer. But that reduction -- if the commission accepts staff recommendations as it normally does -- is thought to be meaningless as the Alaska tourism business struggles to recover completely from a national recession.

The guideline harvest this year was 3.65 million pounds, but charter anglers caught only 2.8 million pounds, which was an increase over 2010 when they caught only 2.7 million. So a 16 percent cut in the guideline harvest is still more than the sport charter fishery actually landed last year.

Bid for one-fish limit not OK'd

Proposed halibut catch reductions in the central Gulf mirror proposed cuts for nearly all halibut fisheries from the U.S.-Canada border to the Bering Sea. The IPHC is a treaty organization that sets catch limits. The U.S. and Canadian governments retain the authority to decide who actually gets to catch the fish allotted to 11 IPHC zones from California north. Alaska just went through an ugly political tussle over such allocations when the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, a commercial-fishing dominated organization that recommends management plans for U.S. waters, tried to stick it to charter operators by cutting the sport angler limit in half.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which usually endorses Council recommendations, balked at this one after charter-boat owners and their clients raised a stink. The North Pacific Council, they argued, had largely ignored the economic impacts of changes destined to affect hundreds of small businesses and ripple through small, Alaska coastal communities from Ketchikan around the Gulf Coast to Kodiak. Charter operators in Homer thought the Council owed everyone an explanation as to just how many were likely to go out of business if NOAA approved the plan to cut anglers aboard sport charters back to one fish.

U.S. Commerce Department officials in Washington, D.C. declined to approve the regulations and sent the whole plan back to the council, which is trying to figure out what to do next.

Commercial fishermen concede the "catch share plan" would have taken fish from charters and reallocated at least some of them back to commercial fishermen. But, they contend, that's only because the setup for the fisheries was unfair from the get-go.

The charter fisheries were given a fixed harvest level in 2003, while commercial fisheries have been working for more than two decades under a harvest level tied to the steadily shrinking number of halibut in the ocean. That's too bad, counter the charter operators, who note that when the halibut decline finally ends commercial catches are likely to go up as fast as they came down.

But when will it finally end? The lingering question for both groups is whether halibut will grow in size and number. As Sidney Swetzof from the Pribilof Islands told the IPHC Tuesday during a short question-and-answer period, "It's very disturbing to us."